CONCERT: TINA TURNER AT THE RITZ

By JON PARELES

Published: August 23, 1984

TINA TURNER sings like a woman who's seen everything, rasping out songs in a voice of grit and flint and hard traveling. After nearly three decades in the music business, she is in peak form. The show she brought to the Ritz on Tuesday, opening a three- night stand, capitalizes on all of Miss Turner's strengths - her voice, her experience and the fact that once on stage, she never stops moving.

Taking advantage of her most popular record since the 1970's, ''Private Dancer,'' Miss Turner has assembled a crack backup band that looks back to her roots in gospel music and soul, then connects them to Rolling Stones-style hard rock and 1980's dance music.

There are no backup singers or dancers, as there were in the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, which broke up in 1976; instead, Miss Turner is confident enough to carry the whole show. Her set showed off her virtuoso singing, especially in Memphis soul tunes such as ''Let's Stay Together.'' But its main purpose was to rouse the sold-out house to dancing, clapping and shouting itself hoarse.

Miss Turner has created a larger- than-life persona for herself. Making no attempt to conceal her age, 45, she acts the part of a lusty, resilient powerhouse; both she and her audience take for granted that she knows what she's singing about.

Although she wrote only one song in her set - the autobiographical 1973 hit ''Nutbush City Limits'' - Miss Turner's persona puts her own stamp on every song. The Beatles' ''Help,'' which Miss Turner transforms into a gospel-flavored hymn, has never sounded more desperate or gutsy. ''What's Love Got to Do With It,'' her current, reggae-flavored hit, becomes utterly scathing by the time Miss Turner gets through with it.

And in what may be something of an open inside joke, she ends ''Proud Mary,'' a hit for the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, with choreography that has her kicking her guitarists across the stage; Ike Turner, her ex- husband, is a guitarist.

Miss Turner doesn't mind mocking herself; after a hip-shaking, knee- swinging rendition of a rock song, she pauses for a deep, sweeping, bow, delivered with a diva's hauteur. Yet in her own way, Miss Turner has as much dignity as any performer now working. If there have to be sex symbols, Tina Turner is the best kind - wise, tough and adult.